Data Protection Operations Lead Job at Airbnb

Job Description

As a key member of our team, you’ll drive operational excellence, foster innovation, and champion security and productivity. You’ll play a pivotal role in designing and maintaining provisioning frameworks, collaborating with engineering partners to optimize permission models and tooling, and balancing speed with robust security across all processes. Your expertise will be essential in leading cross-functional Customer Support initiatives, securing alignment, and building strategic partnerships with teams like InfoSec, Partner Management, Legal, and Privacy to advance our mission. Through your work with stakeholders, you will: Develop and execute improvement roadmaps; Manage projects for implementing new security and privacy controls; Lead process enhancements and optimize access controls; Define audit and reporting mechanisms for both internal and vendor teams; Deliver best-in-class privacy and data protection for Operations. You’ll be joining a newly formed team with the rare opportunity to shape its culture and direction—bringing vision, leadership, and an entrepreneurial spirit as our team grows.

Job Responsibility

Governance & Reporting: Measure, report, and govern privileged access controls to ensure compliance
Requirements & Implementation: Document and translate PAM (Privileged Access Management) requirements for technology partners, supporting efficient, modern, and sustainable solutions
Stakeholder Collaboration: Work cross-functionally to develop and iterate on PAM requirements across Process, Data, and Technology domains
Policy & Standards: Partner with the policy governance team to socialize and publish updates to the PAM Standard
Authentication & Security: Apply your mastery of authentication platforms (Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, Radius) and PAM principles (JIT provisioning) to make recommendations to policy and provisioning processes and technology teams
Regulatory Compliance: Ensure alignment with industry regulations and standards (NIST, ISO/IEC, FFIEC), particularly within financial services
Risk Management: Proactively identify, assess, and mitigate PAM risks, driving continuous improvement and accountability
Stakeholder Engagement: Report on existing and emerging PAM/information security risks to senior leadership with transparency and clarity
Quality Assurance: Design and execute thorough test strategies for privileged access processes, collaborate on defect resolution, and recommend improvements for usability, resilience, and security
Documentation: Maintain clear, comprehensive records of policies, approval processes, and test outcomes
Industry Engagement: Stay up-to-date with emerging trends and best practices in privileged access management
Access Management policies: Define and maintain access management policies for different user personas (admin, developer, user, viewer)
Leadership: Coach and train team members, ensuring accurate and efficient Human in the Loop processes
Access lifecycle: Oversee the full lifecycle of access (create, edit, delete, view, hide, etc.). Build and refine abstractions to inform access decisions, considering: User roles/personas
Tenant or organizational affiliation
Privileges assigned via specific permissions or group memberships

Requirements

8+ years of hands-on experience with Access and Privileged Access Management (PAM) operations in a technology-driven environment
Demonstrated experience in PAM operational tasks, including safe creation and management, privileged account onboarding, policy development, and least-privilege access model implementation
Solid background in identity and access management (IAM) principles and industry best practices
Experience with operationalizing Just-In-Time (JIT) privilege models, role-based access controls (RBAC), and enforcing Segregation of Duties (SoD)
Working knowledge of authentication protocols (e.g., SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect, Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos)
Familiarity with cloud-based privileged access management, including the classification and management of non-human identities (service accounts, API keys, etc.)
Strong understanding of security standards and regulatory frameworks (NIST, ISO/IEC, FFIEC) relevant to access management
Strong SQL abilities, including querying and dashboard creation
Clear, concise communication skills, with a proven ability to collaborate across engineering, security, product, and operational teams without a technical background to drive alignment and best-in-class solutions
Experience in documenting policies, procedures, and reporting on PAM-related risk and compliance metrics
Demonstrated ownership and accountability for continuous improvement in PAM controls and risk management
Proactive in identifying and mitigating security risks related to privileged access
Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment and contributing to cross-functional or global initiatives
Demonstrated ability to build and coach teams
Familiarity with access management challenges specific to cloud-native environments (AWS, GCP, Azure)
Involvement in developing or maintaining Privileged Access Management strategies that address both human and non-human identities, including business users, developers, and service accounts

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Data Protection Operations Lead

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